


To Those Who Will Not Be There For The End

by bogged



Category: Kill Your Darlings (2013)
Genre: Breakfast, College, Drinking, Drug Use, Gen, M/M, New York City, Sad, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bogged/pseuds/bogged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in the movie universe, this is a story exploring what happened around the seams. What was going on when Allen and Lucien mostly weren't around? Focused on David Kammerer and William Burroughs and their friendship, and the behavior we put up with from others because of the love we hold for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Those Who Will Not Be There For The End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zlot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zlot/gifts).



> I so hope you enjoy this, zlot! What a movie. There's so much to unpack here. I have tried to do it a modicum of justice. And of course a huge huge HUGE thank you to She Who Knows Who She Is for pretty much literally holding my hand until the very last second.

David stepped off the bus with his knees popping and back tied in knots, and stood for the first time on the firm New York ground. He inhaled deeply, not minding that the early morning air was sour with exhaust fumes, cigarette smoke, and late summer heat. This was where he was meant to be. It stood to reason that the negatives were meant to be there as well. They would enrich the experience, keep it real, give it a fuller sensory bouquet. The past few years had not been easy and often David felt he was making the same decisions over and over again, to no avail, which hadn't someone once said was the definition of insanity? 

Best not to stray down that path, David thought. Mental stability was a sensitive subject for him, not because of any fault of his own. He was mentally steadfast, thank you kindly. But others—loved ones—there had been a situation. David had fixed it, or so he thought, but somehow it went south again and now he was needed for repairs once again. He may have gotten a job as a janitor, but privately David considered himself more of a handyman. 

The only problem, David thought, was how to fix a problem that doesn't know it's broken?

\---

“Bill fucking Burroughs,” David said, arms open as he enveloped his friend into a one-sided hug.

“Thirty seconds in New York and you've already become one of the unwashed masses, I see,” Burroughs said, pulling away from David's embrace. He pushed his glasses up his nose with a sniff. 

“I've been on a bus for over ten hours, Bill,” David said. “We can't all have drivers on call for long distances.”

“I can't remember the last time I traveled a long distance.” 

“Outside of your mind, you mean. And why would you! Look at what's around you,” David said, gesturing to the city towering above, around, behind, below, through them. Buildings like fingers of ancient giants pushed through the earth. Everything in New York felt so solid and impenetrably large, yet it streamed past his eyes like hot liquid.

“The soul aches, David, for your naivete,” Burroughs said. “As does my stomach. We need breakfast.”

 

They settled into a booth in the farthest back corner of the diner. Burroughs ordered them two coffees and after the coffees came David ordered them food. Two breakfast specials: eggs, bacon, toast, roast potatoes, and sausage.

“I was going to ask who was reminding you to eat when I wasn't around,” David said as their waitress walked away, “But I can see the answer is nobody. Did you meet up with Lucien like I told you? He should've taken you out to eat. I told him as much.” 

Burroughs raised an eyebrow and met David's gaze. His unmoving face, so much thinner than David had last remembered it being, made it difficult to hold direct eye contact. David could see everything on Burroughs' face. All of his insecurities, doubts, and personal crises were reflected in Bill's hard eyes, almost as though he were peering into David's mind and creating his most turbulent thoughts for him. Bill was his closest friend and, in turn, the least forgiving force in his life. 

A loud _plop_ drew David out of his thoughts. Burroughs was stirring something into his coffee, a substance neither cream nor sugar.

“So,” he said, sucking on his spoon before he placed it on his napkin with more precision than the thin sheet of paper deserved. David watched the paper begin to cling to the outer curve of the spoon, the moisture locking them together so that the parts of the paper touched by the metal turned into a shell of sorts, an outer coating that could only be broken by more liquid. A connection ruined via introduction of more bonding agent. Too much moisture and the paper would disintegrate and wash away, ruined completely. 

“Do you have a place to stay?” Bill asked, his eyes softening at the edges.

“I do, in fact. I've found a fitting apartment in the West Village. On Christopher St.”

“But you're working at Columbia,” Bill said, swallowing a large—and from the looks of it, burning hot—gulp of coffee. He was drinking like a man on the verge of death. 

“I am.”

“Do you know the distance between those two locations?” Bill asked wryly.

“I do,” David replied with a smirk. “I work where I work, but I want to _live_ where I live, you see.” 

“I do.”

“Besides, I have heard so much from Lu about the neighborhood and--”

“And you thought you'd give him a warm place to rest his head,” Bill said. 

David smiled around a large bite of toast.

“Someone has to.”

\---

“You're still here,” Lucien said, settling on the couch corner farthest away from where Burroughs sat eating eggs in an upright chair.

“Yes.”

Lucien lit a cigarette and blew one, two, three smoke rings across the room. 

“Were you and Davey ever, you know...”

“Co-dependent?” 

Lucien smirked, more to himself than anything, and dragged deeply on his cigarette. They were silent while Burroughs finished his breakfast. His mother would have admonished him for not offering Lucien anything to eat or drink, even though this was not his apartment. 

He didn't dislike Lucien—in fact there was something about him Burroughs found quite appealing; he imagined it was a whiff of the odorous fume that kept David so enslaved, so out of his fucking mind—but for that very reason he did not trust him. He knew he owed it to David to be a better friend, to save him from what could never end well. And yet, he was intrigued.

And how do you save someone who doesn't know they've been captured?

How do you save someone from a trap of whose snares you aren't fully convinced you're in the clear?

“I can't ever read you,” Lucien said. He cocked his head, slowly drawing his bottom lip into his mouth with his teeth. 

It did not escape Burroughs' notice that the sheet Lucien had draped around him had come open around the crotch—purposefully, without a doubt—and that Lucien was completely naked beneath it. His cock was heavy, still engorged and red and slightly wet. He was almost completely hairless, like a child. Like a serpent. Like a horrible doll. 

“Good,” Burroughs said, standing up to leave.

“Hey Bill,” Lucien called. “Will you be making an appearance at the party tonight?” 

Burroughs turned around. 

“Why?” he asked. 

“Because I'm obsessed with the way you light up a room," Lucien said. Burroughs, in turn, stared at him, unmoving. Lucien snorted, lit another cigarette, and continued. "There's someone I want to introduce to you. I have a class with him. A Jewish kid, Ginsberg. I haven't technically spoken to him yet, but he's so obviously in need of us. I think we can use him.”

“Does David know?” Burroughs asked, surprising himself with the immediacy of his concern. 

Lucien narrowed his eyes. 

“No,” he said. “He doesn't.” 

And then Lucien stood, dropping the blanket completely. He crossed the room to stand directly in front of Burroughs, who met his gaze impassively. 

“Do you think David should know?” Lucien asked, tilting his head upward. Burroughs could smell the post-coital sweat in his hair. He needed a drink. He needed a hit. He needed to be gone. 

“Goodbye, Lulu,” Burroughs said, unsmiling. He put on his hat and walked out the door. He got halfway to the stairs before turned and came back in to ask Lucien to tell David to expect a delivery at some point that evening. When he opened the door, Lucien was leaning against the back of the couch, nude except for a red neckerchief he was knotting behind his head. 

“I knew you couldn't resist,” Lucien said, laughing. 

“Go get David,” Burroughs said, taking off his hat and hanging his jacket back up on the rack. “Tell him I'm making breakfast.”

\---

David wasn't sure what hurt more: seeing Lucien in the bar the morning after the library incident, his forehead pressed close to Allen's, his smooth blond hair grazing tar black curls. He could smell the liquor and lack of sleep on their breath slipping past their lips and resting in each others' mouths. Their cheeks were flushed, high red points of desire and exhilaration and intoxication. Ginsberg was getting cocky, cockier than he already was, his fingers dipping into one of Lucien's shirtcuffs to graze his wrist. David could feel the warmth of his skin.

And then he saw Bill.

\---

“I gotta go,” Jack said, hands deep in his pockets. “I gotta... I-I just need to go.”

Burroughs nodded, his fist clenched tight around the bloody cigarette package. It was still viscous in spots. He could feel it sticking to his fingers, David's blood, seeping into the troughs of his fingerprints, empty riverbeds flooded.

After a while he felt compelled to move. He needed a cigarette. He needed to get something in his stomach or he was going to vomit. He paid for a hot bun and a small, bitter coffee and walked along the river. The only other people out this early were foreign women on their way to work and the occasional dog walker or mother, eyes shadowed with dark circles, pushing a pram in a last ditch effort to lull her baby to sleep. 

Burroughs looked out at the water, inspected every wave. His hands shaking, he put one of David's cigarettes in his mouth and lit it. After walking for a few minutes he leaned over the railing and squinted into the murky Hudson. Perhaps something would stick out at him. A scrap of cloth, or a personal token might have escaped David's pocket and floated to the surface. That was a useless hope to pursue. Surely Lucien would have taken any type of identification out of David's pockets before he'd--

Something was rising in his throat, thick from the hot bun he'd forced down. Burroughs rested his forehead on the cold, wet railing and tried to force calm. He tasted metal, like he'd been drinking from the river. Like he was inside David's mouth. 

He knew he should follow Jack and go home. He needed to call his father. He needed to call Allen. He needed to call his supplier. He stood, his feet stuck to the ground as though the blood on his fingers had coursed through his body and seeped out through the soles of his shoes. 

Burroughs had never been a man of outward vocality, but he knew he couldn't place any of those phone calls. He could hardly swallow, let alone form a sentence. All of their work, so many hours devoted to rearranging meaning and structure and form and here he was: struck dumb by the one person they'd cut out of their new vision. David had thought they were full of shit. Everyone, even Burroughs deep down, had thought David was full of shit. They all knew they were all full of shit. The only difference being, no one but David cared. And oh how he cared. He cared so deeply it was a sickness. It was a poison, a bullet, a noxious gas. They should have bottled up what David felt every day of his goddamn life and sent it over to Europe in bombs. The war would be over before sundown. Burroughs often thought David had a tainted batch of caring in his veins instead of blood. 

But now he saw, as he brought his, David's, cigarette to his lips for one last drag, that it wasn't true. Of course David had blood in him. It was here, on his fingers. On his lips. Tiny particles of David's blood inhaled into his lungs, where it would be absorbed into the throbbing meat of Burroughs' organs. 

Burroughs took a steadying breath and stood up straight. He glanced at the water tossed the butt of his cigarette. Then he turned and began to walk home.

He would call his father, and then he'd call Allen, and then he would travel a very long distance after all.


End file.
